


anything you can do (i can do better)

by attheborder



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: A Threesome? Not Physically, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Hair-pulling, M/M, Orgasm Delay, Pre-Canon, Shame Edward Little Power Hour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:35:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26726041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attheborder/pseuds/attheborder
Summary: “Where’s—Jopson?” Little stammers. He scrambles for his shirttails, pulling them hurriedly over himself in an attempt at an officer’s propriety.“YourThomashad to attend to his Captain,” Tozer explains. “I’ve been given orders to see to you in his absence, sir.”
Relationships: Lt Edward Little/Sgt Solomon Tozer, Thomas Jopson/Lt Edward Little
Comments: 22
Kudos: 68





	anything you can do (i can do better)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ktula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ktula/gifts).



The land camp’s come a long way. A week ago when the ships dropped anchor in the bay, the place was a barren stretch of rocky shore, and among the men the prevailing mood was one of dismal dread at the prospect of having to spend an entire winter on this bleak and blanched isle. 

But to the credit of command, the transformation has been a magnificent one. On his patrols around the site these past days, Sergeant Tozer has watched an entire village spring up out of the shale: sturdy tents and cabins that contain everything from the officers’ berths to the privies to a schoolroom for the seamen, in which they were being taught their letters by a steward from _Erebus._

Some hands had even been assigned to the building of an observatory, a circular structure where magnetic readings were to be taken the whole season long. It amuses Tozer no small amount to imagine his Captain and _Erebus’s_ Commander cooped up together in that little hut by order of the Admiralty for weeks on end—word among the men was that they couldn’t even stand to be at the same wardroom table for longer than an hour—and he and his Marines have joked that such a trial might give Crozier more sympathy for the plight of the NCO. 

The officers had overseen the laborious transfer of winter stores from the ships to the shore, from where they were then moved into purpose-built storerooms, located a ways distant from the central quarters of the camp. This was so as not to endanger the men by drawing the wildlife of Beechey Island near to their quarters, should they come a-sniffing. 

It’s towards one of these storerooms that Tozer is headed now, for it’s the only place the man he’s looking for might be. His quarry was not to be found in the mess, the sick bay, nor the large tent that had taken the place of the galley as a sleeping-place for the ships’ combined companies; by process of elimination, there’s but few locations left, and this one the most likely out of them.

He’s surprised to find the door locked when he reaches it. No, not locked—stuck, it seems. He hammers on it impatiently with a gloved fist until there is a creaking judder from behind, and it swings inwards. 

“Sergeant Tozer,” says Mr. Jopson. He’s squinting into the sudden glare of September afternoon light. “... Is there something you require from the storeroom?” 

“There is,” says Tozer. “You.” The steward fails to find the humor in Tozer’s gruff admission; his expression is guarded, as it always is, but his posture speaks to supreme annoyance, roiling beneath the surface. Tozer clears his throat. “I’ve come looking for you. You’re needed at the command tent—the Captain's meeting with the surgeons has been moved up, Lieutenant Irving says. They’re starting now.” 

Jopson immediately straightens up. Whatever vexation Tozer has dealt him with his arrival vanishes; replaced with utter seriousness. He nods, and ducks away, getting at something right beside the door; there’s the sound of rustling fabric and when he appears he’s jacketed and hatted, pulling on gloves. 

But he lingers at the threshold, not bounding away immediately as Tozer expected.

“Is there something wrong?” Tozer asks. 

The steward’s uncanny eyes give Tozer a sweeping once-over, evaluating him against some unknown standard. Tozer tries to remember if he’d polished his crossband that morning; resists the urge to straighten his hat, smooth his wrinkled slops down. 

“You’re not on watch, are you, Sergeant?” 

“Not for another two bells.” 

Jopson nods. “I was in the middle of a task which would be best not left undone. But—I think perhaps you would be able to complete it to my satisfaction.” 

Tozier tries to peer into the storeroom beyond the doorway, but it’s dark, crowded with tall shadows, and he can’t make out any shape that would give a clue as to what task the steward means. “Depends on what it is needs doing,” he says. It wouldn’t exactly improve his afternoon to have to spend it polishing the Captain’s bottles, or whatever the hell it is a steward does when he’s alone in a storeroom. But, being a civilian with standing above a warrant officer, Jopson technically outranks him—a fact that has always nettled Tozer—and as such if Jopson deems Tozer fit for some duty, then it will fall to him to complete it. 

But he needn’t have worried. The task is not an unpleasant one. Far from it, in fact; Jopson’s efficient dispatch finds Tozer holding back a grin, gripping the strap of his rifle tightly with banked anticipation.

“Yes, sir,” says Tozer. “You can count on me.” 

Jopson nods with finality, and then disappears past him, covering the distance towards the command tent with graceful, long-legged strides. 

When Tozer enters the storeroom and pushes a nearby crate against the closed door to simulate a lock, as Jopson had instructed, the darkness is near-complete. The smell of sawdust from the newly-built shelves permeates the air, mingling with the tang of the recently dried pitch that’s been caulked between the boards to keep the cold out and the scents in. 

He winds his way through the well-stocked labyrinth towards the glow of the lamp visible at the far end of the storeroom, past stacked barrels of salt pork, racks of port and gin bottles, towering walls made up of crates full of red Goldner’s tins. 

His footsteps echo off the low ceiling of the structure. The light is just around the next bend in the shelves, now. He hears someone speak as he approaches: 

“Thomas, oh, thank Christ, please, I’m so—” 

Tozer rounds the corner, and the voice fails in mid-sentence. 

Lieutenant Little is lying back on a pallet of sailcloth, socked feet resting flat with his knees bent up to the ceiling. His trousers have been shoved down to his ankles, his waistcoat and shirt unbuttoned to bare a pale chest, dappled with dark hair, and his cock is straining red against his stomach, tip glistening for all to see. 

“Where’s—Jopson?” Little stammers. He scrambles for his shirttails, pulling them hurriedly over himself in an attempt at an officer’s propriety. 

“Your _Thomas_ had to attend to his Captain,” Tozer explains. “I’ve been given orders to see to you in his absence, sir.” 

The lieutenant’s mouth, hanging open sightly, snaps shut, and his gaze darkens. 

“You can always finish yourself while I watch, now,” says Tozer lightly, when Little offers no response. “I won’t take offense. But that’s not what Mr. Jopson wanted of you. Or of me.” 

He sorely hopes Little will bend to such pressure, despite whatever reservations he may harbor, for Tozer’s prick is stirring already at the unusual sight of the buttoned-up lieutenant so debauched. The lack of Little’s usual layers of wool and gold braid have revealed him to be a slighter man than one might’ve predicted—not delicate, no, plenty solid enough, but still hardly the intimidating, official presence of many a quarterdeck watch. His hair, normally neatly combed, is sweat-damp and plastered in dark streaks across his forehead, and without its black stock to lend it modesty his neck is a soft-looking thing, most likely shaved just that morning.

Little still doesn’t speak. His eyes flicker amber in the lamplight. Tozer says, “Would you want to disappoint him? I wouldn’t.”

A pause; and then Little nods, acquiescing. He lets go of his shirttails; they fall away and bare his prick once more to the dim yellow glow of the lamp. “Well, come on then,” he says shortly, the familiar condescension of his rank breaking through the oddness hanging heavy in the air. 

“Is that how you speak to Mr. Jopson?” Tozer asks. “Patience, Lieutenant.” He sets his rifle down carefully against a stack of crates and begins the leisurely process of removing the layers of his uniform. His crossband, ammunition pouch, slops; then his hat, his Welsh wig, his woolen surcoat, his belt, his boots. 

The longer this pantomime proceeds the more Little squirms, shifts where he sits. A lesser man might’ve given in already, started giving himself a good tug, but Little is a first lieutenant, disciplined to the last. Not to mention Tozer doubts that Jopson allows for anything less than absolute fealty to the precise schedule he’d devised for their assignation. 

Gratifyingly, Little’s prick hasn’t seemed to subside at all; the whole of him, sure as anything, is still trembling on whatever delicious verge the steward had drawn him to in the moments before Tozer had the good fortune to interrupt. 

He’s watching Tozer with heavy-lidded eyes, his countenance clouded with a confusion of lust and what might be disappointment: in Jopson, for abandoning him, or perhaps in Tozer, for not being Jopson. Tozer is looking forward to showing him there’s no need for such glumness. 

At last Tozer is down to his shirt and braces, and as he lazily unbuttons his trousers Little’s tongue manages to free itself from whatever prison of nerves it’d been bound in. “What did Jopson say?” he asks. “I mean. What did he tell you to—” He breaks off, looks away from Tozer, his eyes avoiding with almost coquettish delicacy the sight of Tozer’s prick, now in hand and being worked up to a healthy rise. 

“He told me that he was going to fuck you, sir,” Tozer says. After a moment more of attention to himself he approaches Little’s makeshift berth and drops into a crouch. Hooking his hands around the inside of Little’s lifted knees, he pulls the lieutenant towards him, inspecting his lower half with dutiful attention. He’s been well-prepared; whatever clever oil Jopson used is gleaming as it drips out of him, pooling on the sailcloth, slicking the inside of Little’s thighs. Tozer gathers up some of it on his fingertips, rubbing them together teasingly. “He told me he was going to get on top of you and bugger you till you cried.” 

Now, he’d put it a fair bit more delicately than that, and in rather more instructive detail, but Tozer had gotten the picture; and besides Jopson had hardly been three paces gone before a handful of wholly new pictures had begun to occur to him, which deposed the original with great efficiency.

Little is wonderfully stretched and slick, welcoming two of Tozer’s thick fingers almost hungrily when he pushes in without a warning. “All for me?” Tozer says. “You shouldn’t have.” 

“You’re a replacement,” Little gasps out, rather ungratefully. 

“Should Mr. Jopson have left you all alone, then?” Tozer asks. “Until he was done doing the Captain’s bidding?” 

Would be nice, if Little could work up the courage to admit that he’d’ve taken whatever hand or prick had come his way, in this sorry state he’d been left in. But no such admission comes; instead he just lets out the start of a whine that he catches, self-consciously, his hands clutching at the cloth beneath him. 

“If you think you can manage on your own,” Tozer says, with a smirk. His fingers still, then slip slowly out. 

Little shakes his head silently. A sneer threatens to build on that handsome face, which Tozer preempts by plunging back in, three fingers now. Certainly it’s more for his own joy than for the lieutenant’s need this point: he’s well and ready, but Tozer finds he’s enjoying drawing this out further. Perhaps Jopson would have let Little spend by now, but he’s not here—and besides, Tozer is reveling in every gasp he can wring out of Little, each furrow in that refined brow that deepens when he brushes against that treasured spot inside him.

Feels right that it’s him attending to the lieutenant, anyway. Whatever Jopson was playing at here, it surely lay far outside his purview as Captain Crozier’s steward. Whereas the Marines that Tozer leads were conscripted to serve and protect the entire class of _Terror’s_ officers, of which Little is the second-highest ranking—naturally, dealing with such a man is well within the scope of his own commission. 

Soon Little seems awfully close to spending just like this, which won’t do, so Tozer ceases his attentions again, and crawls up over Little until he’s straddling him. One hand sweeps up the firm rise of Little’s stomach, then toys with a nipple as he leans down, bringing their faces close. 

“Good thing it was me, that came to find Mr. Jopson,” Tozer rasps, right into the shell of Little’s ear. “If he’d asked this of another Marine they’d have done it, sure enough, but that would be the problem, wouldn’t it?” 

“Oh, what on Earth do you mean?” mutters Little. 

“No imagination, those boys,” Tozer says, with a gentle tsk. “Would do just as they were told.” 

“Sergeant, I think you’re—” 

Tozer never finds out what exactly Little thinks he is; he lets his weight fall almost fully onto Little, trapping Little’s eager prick beneath him, and gives a few rough, savage ruts against it. He’s more than rewarded for this with a full-throated keen from Little, all pretense of restraint gone as he arches up, bearing into at Tozer with pitiful eagerness. 

A few more weighty jolts, letting his own hard prick find pleasure against Little’s stomach, and then he props himself up on a knee, all the better to admire Little’s full-body flush, and his cock, which has somehow managed to retain the forlornly fetching aspect of the lieutenant in miniature, as it strains and leaks.

Around now is probably about when Jopson would’ve marked Little up a bit, below the collar and on the chest as he’d told Tozer he had leave to. Perhaps that what Little is expecting now, looking up at Tozer through those long, dark lashes of his, pretty as any country lady. But unlike the steward Tozer isn’t really the possessive type; there’s no joy to be had for him in such ministrations. 

Jopson had also said the lieutenant enjoyed lying back; Tozer has a better idea about that. After all, while Jopson’s instructions had been specific enough, at the end he’d just fixed Tozer with an authoritative stare and said, _Make sure the Lieutenant is satisfied. Very satisfied._ and in Tozer’s mind such a mission superseded whatever particulars had come before, and gave authority to Tozer’s own better judgement, such as it may be. 

“Up now,” says Tozer, and there’s that sneer again on Little’s face but it’s all just pantomime for the benefit of the game he’s playing inside his own head, the one all officers know off by heart, to justify the liberties they take with their Articles, their good Christian principles. He can make all the faces he wants but he’s aching for a hard prick inside him so badly he’s bursting with it. Tozer could make him say it but it would just be wasting time. 

Little lets Tozer turn him over, lets Tozer put him on his hands and knees, lets Tozer position himself behind him, shift his shirttails and placket out of the way. Tozer’s cock teases at Little’s hole until the lieutenant lets out a whine; he gives it a second longer, play-acting at hesitation. 

“Will you get on with it,” says Little. He might have been trying for domineering but it comes close enough to begging for Tozer to feel it in his prick, a twitch of satisfied delight running up from the center of him.

“Steady now,” says Tozer. It’s an intoxicating glide when he pushes in, with how open and slick Little’s gotten now, from Tozer’s fingers and Jopson’s before them. Tozer allows himself a triumphant grunt as he bottoms out; hears it echoed in a welcome whimper from before him. Getting an arm around Little’s chest, he pulls him up, so that Little’s back fits neatly to his front. Little’s hand clutches blindly backwards, settling on the side of Tozer’s thigh, nails digging in through the fabric like he’s got to make sure there’s really a man inside him. 

With one foot braced on the ground and the other knee set on the edge of the pallet, Tozer has all the leverage he needs to drive into Little with athletic vigor, long slow strokes building up until he’s snapping his hips in a steady rhythm, letting out a loud, satisfied huff with every thrust. 

This isn’t the orlop or the pantry or the head; there’s nobody nearby, no call for quiet. The lieutenant knows this too; he’s running his mouth like a doxy: “Oh, Christ,” Little is saying, “oh, fuck—yes, oh, please—yes—” 

Tozer pushes two fingers into Little’s mouth and Little takes them eagerly, sucking at them as Tozer twists them round his tongue, getting sloppy, letting Little’s spit leak out to drip down his clean-shaven chin. 

Mr. Jopson wouldn’t have thought of _that,_ Tozer is sure. Fussy, fastidious Jopson probably fucks like he cleans: never a hand dirty, never a hair out of place. A warm, wet cloth nearby to wipe the grime off, make them both respectable, as if nothing whatsoever had occurred. Tozer doesn’t mean to let Little forget this so easily.

Two weeks ago there was little chance Tozer could have had chance to even speak to the sour First Lieutenant without being observed and overheard by a half-dozen seamen; and here he is now, fucking him with a hand at his mouth and another braced round his chest. What a private paradise this cold desert has turned out to be. 

Little is still mumbling, incoherent, against Tozer’s fingers. On a whim, he removes them, runs them up into Little’s hair and then, in time with his next thrust, pulls backwards, hard. Little lets out a keening howl, a gloriously wanton sound. Tozer does it again, harder this time; Little rewards him with another cry. 

Outside, maybe, a Marine on patrol, Daly or Hedges at this hour, might look up at the sky, expecting to see a bird wheeling above, and find nothing but Arctic sky, blue and empty. 

Tozer feels a stab of unexpected pity for Mr. Jopson. The chances that he’d ever wrenched such wonderful noises out of the Lieutenant, Tozer thinks, is low. 

Would that he were here now—perhaps the Captain didn’t need him after all—perhaps he would return, slipping back inside the storeroom, and come across the scene he’d set in motion. He’d have to sit seething off to the side, watching while Tozer took his pleasure from the lieutenant in Jopson’s place—

The image blooms vivid in Tozer’s mind, even as Little pants and groans against him: Jopson with a fist around his cock, frigging himself as he watches—reduced to a mere observer, knowing he’s made a mistake in letting Tozer at Little, knowing the next time he fucked Little, the lieutenant would only be thinking of Tozer’s prick, the stretch of it, the rough and rampant burn, the animal heat that Jopson’s orderly affections are no match for. Jopson would clench his teeth—furious at Tozer, at himself, his usual placid affect shattered—but unable to stop himself from spilling, a mutinous release at the sight before him— 

With barely any warning at all, Tozer spends inside Little, letting out one last long groan into the back of Little’s neck, lips pressed into the neatly trimmed chestnut hair at his nape, tasting sweat and expensive hair oil. 

Little drops forward onto his hands again when the arm holding him up falls away. On shaking legs, Tozer reaches down and gives the lieutenant’s prick a just a few short pulls before at long last Little reaches his crisis with a gasp of pent-up relief, spending copiously onto the sailcloth beneath him. 

Tozer stumbles backwards, until he’s leaning against the barrel behind him. Little rolls onto his back and lies there on the pallet, panting. It’s a remarkable image, yet when Tozer closes his eyes it does not linger, and instead he returns to the imagined sight of Jopson’s dark waistcoat, splattered with his own seed—

It occurs to Tozer that Jopson might have picked him out some time ago; his queer gaze might have lingered on him, in the galley or on the quarterdeck, and assigned him thence to some obscure category. Perhaps if he’d not knocked on the storeroom door today, the call would have come at a future time regardless. Perhaps there was less chance in this than he’d thought: about that, he doesn't quite know what he thinks.

When he opens his eyes again, Little has already begun the process of buttoning himself back into his uniform. Tozer shrugs his braces back onto his shoulders, and goes to fetch up his red Marine’s jacket from where he’d folded it carefully and laid it on a crate at random. 

As he lifts it he notices what lies beneath: a score of dark bottles, sitting squat and dusty in tidy rows. He takes one out, and holds it up to the light: it’s a handsome bottle of whiskey; expensive-looking, bearing a printed paper label with an Irish name and a year over a decade past. 

He’ll bet it tastes a fine share better than his daily grog ration. He wonders how many wardroom suppers have found Little partaking of it, from a cut-crystal glass poured by Mr. Jopson, and finds himself sickly envious, in a way he doesn’t much like. 

“Put that back,” Little says, frowning. He’s sitting up now, pulling his boots on. 

“Was just messing,” Tozer says, carefully replacing the bottle, “sir.” 

“Well, don’t,” says Little. “If the Captain’s stores are found damaged, it’ll be Jopson who’s blamed.” He’s run a hand through his hair to try and tame it back into place, rather unsuccessfully. He still looks like a man who’s just been fucked, and hard. 

Tozer smiles. “We wouldn’t want that, would we now.” 

“No,” says Little. He pauses, and then says, “You ought to go, Sergeant. We shouldn’t leave together.” 

“Aye, sir.” 

Tozer gets the rest of his uniform on, takes up his rifle, and leaves Lieutenant Little brooding in the glow of the lamp. 

  
  
  


***

**Author's Note:**

> i am on [tumblr](http://areyougonnabe.tumblr.com) and [twitter!](http://twitter.com/areyougonnabe)
> 
> there may already be a sequel in the works for this one... title from [this classic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO23WBji_Z0) ofc


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